Transmogrified Tiger

At least on iOS, make sure you update the MLB app first. I tried a couple times where it said it worked but no subscription showed on the MLB account end. Updating the app and doing it one more time did the trick.

The goalposts are probably moving after last offseason though, and Nico's 2022 is a fair bit better than any season Frazier(who is also 2 years older) and Rosario have had. I think the 5/10/20 is a pretty fair anchor point.

Good Adds a year under contract to a good player Starts next year so doesn't touch this year's LT payroll when they're very close to it now Doesn't commit to super long term where a player with Nico's attributes/injury history has more downside Proof of concept that they can extend pre-FA players Bad Only buys out one year when they could've done 2-3 without a ton of downside Lines up Nico, Seiya, and Taillon to all hit FA the same year

Cody Bellinger's Spring Training K% vs. Regular Season K% 2017: 29% ST/26% regular season 2018: 25%/24% 2019: 26%/16% skipping 2020 due to Covid gap (14%/17% if you're curious) 2021: 35%/27% 2022: 49%/27% 2023: 16%/????

Guzman looks like an IFA signing that converted from hitting to pitching after a couple seasons(so my guess is there's good velo there). He's done nothing but start games so far, but between his age(25 next month), level(only got 1.1 IP in AA last year), and results(unremarkable) I'm thinking they're gonna maybe mess with his breaking pitches and tell him to go nuts in relief.

The tweet embeds themselves are slow loading, but that was an issue with the old site too(and made direct linking a pain because it screwed up scroll positioning) and is likely a Twitter issue. Haven't noticed the rest of a page's content loading slowly on this end(Safari, mostly desktop but some mobile).

The stolen bases are coming: Worth remembering this is a sneaky source of depth on the baserunning side of the ball. On a per 150 game basis, Swanson, Happ, Suzuki, Bellinger, Morel, Velazquez, and even Wisdom were 10+ SB guys last year, with Hoerner, McKinstry, and Mastrobuoni (AAA) at 20+. They were 4th in total SB last year. They were also very good defensively(both raw SB totals and rSB) but it's hard to disentangle how much of that was Willson.

I don't have a particular attachment to McKinstry, but DFAing him to make sure you can carry a third catcher(and in particular *these* 3 catchers) or risk losing Torrens to opt-out seems insane to me. And similarly, if retaining quality depth is such a concern, why would Rucker(who has not been good in ST) be a lock at the likely expense of Leiter Jr's(who has been excellent in ST) potential opt out?

I love the catcher one, although I think a lot of the evening up in that comparison happens outside WAR. Rios is part of the last All-Star roster spot voting. Davis gets an extended MLB shot before Mervis (this is only really bold in the context of the roster) By the end of the year Kilian is higher in people's 2024 rotations than Steele By the stretch run, Alzolay is getting used a lot like Hader as a 3-5 out bridge to the closer(Fulmer)

Something that was maybe blindingly obvious to everyone else, but I didn't realize til this morning. From the forums view, forums that have no unread posts have the icon grayed out, while forums that do have unread posts stay normal transparency. I was missing the ability to jump between forums that have unread posts and it was there in a different form all along.

This is aggregated by posts instead of topics, but it is all unreads: https://northsidebaseball.com/discover/unread/ You can tweak the filters(and supposedly make that your profile's default) so only Topics(aka forum) stuff shows up and not blogs or other things.

There was a graphic during the Houston game that said it hasn't happened in the 45 year history of seeds in the tournament.

This time next year everyone is gonna know Brandon Birdsell's name and he'll be knocking on the door of both the MLB roster and Cubs Top 10 lists. If I wanted to be especially hot takey I'd call him the best player from last year's draft, but I don't really believe that.

how many times do we have to learn our lesson, the injury update thread will still come for us even if we try to play semantic games with the thread title

So I've not really gotten very excited about Balogun because I didn't see much that was pointing to him picking the US, but dropping out of England U21 camp and then beelining to meet with the USMNT has my attention. As an aside, finally a useful outcome of the insane energy some people have towards the national team, playing geoguessr on his social media pics.

A simple and imperfect way of thinking about it. Ohtani is a 140 wRC+ hitter, and I don't see much reason to think he wouldn't be at least passable in RF if he stopped pitching. Given his sprint speed and arm strength he'd probably be at least a little above average. That profile is basically Kyle Tucker and about a 5 win guy over a full season. He'll be 29 when he hits free agency, so you can probably average the Turner, Bogaerts, and Correa(before the injury concerns) deals and have a decent approximation of the value of Ohtani the hitter. *Then* you add in the value of him pitching, which is him being a 5 win TOR starter last year and probably for at least a couple more years, since he's made noise about giving up pitching. A 5 win starter who recently signed a short term deal because his pitching days are coming close to an end sounds a lot like Scherzer. So tack on Scherzer's money to the SS average and you probably can squint and see 10/450? This doesn't exactly work for a few reasons, but it might be a useful starting point.

I think the other part of it is the balls in play downside, imperfect splitters become home runs more often than other pitches. Moreso with the launch angle/low ball hunters we've seen in recent years.

On the BN list, 7 of the Top 10 will start the year at AA or higher by my count. Feels like it's been a while since we could say that.

I don't go to a ton of games, but there's been a between innings timer for several years now and I've never noticed a hitter struggling to be ready to step to the plate by the time it started(whether an ump enforced that timer is another thing). What's changed with the pitch clock rules that makes this such a concern? I'm sensitive to the fact that if a guy makes a running catch in the RF corner then has to go to the 3B dugout to lead off that we don't want them to have to sprint to the plate, but I feel like this problem would've presented itself before unless I'm missing something.

lol at Ohtani ripping his own helmet off as he rounds first

I'm not particularly attached to Tauchman either, I'm following the thread title which is more about guessing the outcome than our personal preference. In that vein, I think the message coming from camp largely excludes Velazquez/Morel/Davis, and my assumption is Tauchman isn't gonna be starting very many games with Wisdom, Rios, Madrigal, and McKinstry giving a lot of balance across 3B/RF (L/R, power/contact, etc) plus Mancini could steal some PT in RF. One way or another though, this is a decision with a clear expiration date. This is Seiya's roster spot, and even if he has a setback, in this permutation you've got upwards of 5 different guys(Davis, Velazquez, Morel, Mervis, Mastrobuoni) who can play their way into it unless Tauchman lights the world ablaze in limited time.

It's got to be someone and they're short on true outfielders. Given how strongly they've signaled they want Davis, Morel, and Velazquez playing every day for development, that means you're left with Tauchman, Deluzio(different profile but same complaints you're making above apply), Mastrobuoni (not much of an OF), or Hill(also not on 40 man). An NRI like Tauchman that you can easily DFA when Seiya gets back(since after that point you're likely to be willing to bring up one of the 3 prospects) seems reasonable to me, and the beat writers seem to think Tauchman has an inside track on that spot. They've got an excess of guys on the 40 man for 3B/1B/DH, though. Wisdom and/or Mancini could man RF for a few weeks without needing to drop someone from the roster to add a guy like Tauchman. The defense is likely not as good with Wisdom out there (and definitely not as good with Mancini), but they're both going to give you more offense and it allows AB's to someone like Rios who is a much more likely long-term contributor. With the assumption above about Morel/Davis/Velazquez(plus the obvious exclusion of Alcantara, Amaya, and Canario), the position player options that are already on the 40 man for that spot are...Mastrobuoni. Yes, you could get away with not including Tauchman/Deluzio/Hill for a few weeks, especially if Suzuki is making good progress like he seems he is. But on the other hand, you have 1 free 40 man spot already via Hendricks, and you can probably get another one if you really really wanted to via Rucker. There's multiple guys who might be DFA candidates by May(McKinstry, Hosmer, maybe Wick) so if you do need to make future room for Sanders, Mervis, etc you aren't super limited. Plus it's even easier to get to a full pen with guys already on the 40 man so there isn't an urgent decision you have to make on opening day. There's maybe the potential opportunity cost of keeping Leiter Jr, but he's already seen what the market had to offer him once this winter and came back on an NRI deal, so nothing too significant.

It's got to be someone and they're short on true outfielders. Given how strongly they've signaled they want Davis, Morel, and Velazquez playing every day for development, that means you're left with Tauchman, Deluzio(different profile but same complaints you're making above apply), Mastrobuoni (not much of an OF), or Hill(also not on 40 man). An NRI like Tauchman that you can easily DFA when Seiya gets back(since after that point you're likely to be willing to bring up one of the 3 prospects) seems reasonable to me, and the beat writers seem to think Tauchman has an inside track on that spot.

I would be a bit surprised if McKinstry doesn't make the opening day roster, but with as little as he's shown and the options surrounding him(especially given the Swanson signing and the "buzz" around Madrigal the 3B) I wouldn't quite guarantee he's on the 26 man. I would like him to be but I definitely wouldn't guarantee Merryweather on the 26 man either, maybe that's me just not reading enough of the recent quotes and news. Right now I'd guess the bench to be Barnhart, Madrigal, McKinstry, Tauchman at the start. I'd expect that to not be a static PH pool though considering the holes in Wisdom and Rios's games that will give the non-catchers their share of starts too. On the pitching side, I just really don't know, and Thompson struggling with velocity doesn't help. I'd probably go with Boxberger, Hughes, Fulmer, Alzolay, Merryweather, Wick, Sampson, Thompson, with Assad taking Thompson's place if he's not ramped up/healthy. Leiter Jr is probably the last cut, and I wouldn't be shocked if he took Thompson's place instead. Tauchman requires a 40 man spot but Hendricks to the 60 day solves that, otherwise it's clean because there's no Leiter Jr/Duffey/Sanders/Deluzio making the team out of the gate.

I don’t even mean this in a snarky way, if my team lost in the first round to a 13, 15, and 16 in consecutive years I might stop watching them. At least don’t invest a bunch of time in the regular season so future disappointments hurt less